Once More Into the Rift
by SillyGoy
Summary: A redoing of the original story. A War Thunder player is actually transported into the Strike Witch Universe through the Oculus Rift and finds himself influencing the world through his gamey powers, but only while playing the game. The resulting situations are confusing (and even scarring) to quite a few characters.
1. Disaster at Essen

**A/N: More to fix formatting errors than anything else, it is here wherein I declare that I claim no ownership over Strike Witches.  
><strong>

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><p><strong>ONCE MORE INTO THE RIFT<strong>

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><p><strong>June 02, 1940<br>Essen Airbase, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Karlsland**

The early morning pigeons traveled in a vee formation as they hopped from rooftop to rooftop with an unknown purpose. Windows were just beginning to be opened, shop signs reversed to face the other way, and children were just waking up to the scent of hearty meals of bread, milk and sausages – Karslandic essentials – freshly made with love from hearths and stoves and caring mothers. At the airbase half an hour's drive away from the city proper, the transition from dawn to morning was only slightly less peaceful, with speakers blaring loudly the trumpetry of reveille.

Breakfast was followed with morning lectures at the classrooms for recruits; mechanics resumed their work on the various aircraft parked under roofs or in the open air, in which case they pulled away sizable tarpaulins first; witches and witches-in-training forwent their lacy nightgowns for their more-obscuring service uniforms. The double-headed eagle of the Karlslandic nation waved along with its flag, high on the pole, according to young day's breeze.

Unassuming, unsuspecting it all was; there were no breaks from routine, except for one thing.

The Bf 109 materialized at the start of the runway, its sleek body glinting off the light of the morning. Its engine began to roar as the propeller turned on its own, and then settled into a low growl as it idled there. The pilot seemed confused, craning his head all around the cockpit, his eyes wide like two saucers. Up close, one wouldn't be at fault for speculating what kind of narcotic he was under the influence of, and yet no-one else at Essen Airbase seemed to mind. And though it seemed like he wanted to plaster his hands all over the canopy glass, neither of those appendages would not budge from the flight controls. His mouth was consistently agape, and he was breathing rather quickly.

Lady Luck had it that no-one was looking at the particular start of the strip when the plane had magically appeared there. There were, of course, some that had become confused at the sudden sight, but gave it all the benefit of the doubt and dismissed the happening altogether.

A few moments passed, and then that engine growl increased in volume as the pilot pushed the throttle lever forwards and the fighter plane accelerated. Its wheels travelled inches in an instant, and then meters, and then tens thereof as centi-seconds swung by. His feet were stern on the rudder pedals as he kept the machine going straight down the runway, and his right hand was stiffly upon the flight stick. With all of this, and as the magnetos were set up the right way, clearly the pilot knew what he was doing, and yet there was naught but sheer bewilderment making a wrinkled battlefield of his face.

The guard in the watchtower gave him a salute as he speeded by, and he tried in reflex to return it, but in a split-second, the man and his building were already gone, so fast was the plane going now at well over a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour.

"Oh my God," said the pilot, who had never even driven a car before. "Oh my God!" he repeated. "This is some extreme shit!" and he wasn't wrong with that statement.

A tall man wearing an elaborate cap and a trenchcoat exited out of an unremarkable building at the periphery of the complex that neighbored the airstrip. His long attire swung from the wind in the wake of the Bf 109, and he did a double-take before furrowing his brow. "Lieutenant, I thought there were no flights scheduled for today," he said expectantly, not taking his eyes off of the errant machine.

The young, crimson-haired maiden at his side brought up a clipboard, turned a page, and nodded her head in the affirmative. "There aren't any, sir."

"Then who…?"

"Maybe he's just going out for a relaxing flight or something," offered a shorter girl, one with a bob of gold for a head of hair, whose relaxed hands she held behind her head with her elbows in a wide akimbo.

"No." Colonel Atholl, snarling lightly at the thought of the pilot, stepped forward, and calmly looked to the side. "Gunther, sorry, but you have duty for now. Tell that flyer to swing back and land. I'll punish him myself."

"Yes, sir," and the man began for the distant control tower.

"Foolish." Atholl shook his head, looking once more at the aircraft which was at now quite some distance. "Young fellow wants to show off, get himself into trouble. Thinks he can do better than his fellow recruits. Arrogant."

"What will you do to him when he comes back?" Minna asked meekly.

"Bread and water for one week, I think. No leave for half a year, either."

"Ehh? Isn't that a bit harsh?" Erica raised an eyebrow.

"You must follow the rules and regulations in the Luftwaffe, Sergeant Hartmann, and acting on your own without orders like this – taking a valuable piece of equipment for a joyride… what is he, suddenly sixteen years old again? An accident could happen. We could lose that machine. Hell, this is actually grounds for a discharge. Depending on his record, I might just do that."

"But he's been training here for two years! That's too harsh a punishment after all that he's learned here," Minna objected.

"Think of it what you will, lieutenant, but this is to instill discipline amongst the ranks. For when Emperor Rudolf lost Vienna to the Ottomans, it was because of rabble in his troops; and it was the same when the Orussians lost to the Fusoans in 1904. Discipline is a must. A good soldier is one who obeys without question; a good officer is one who leads without doubt."

Minna could not help but note that the colonel's military ideology was obsolete to the point of Napoleonic, and went against everything she was learning in the officer school she was actually just about to graduate. Ah, well, this was what you would expect from an old guard, a balding, aging veteran of the first war with the Neuroi. To try and change his views would be pointless, so she just nodded dutifully.

"… yes, sir."

"Very good," Atholl smiled. "Take in these words, for when you join your sisters-in-arms up in the air, you will be like knights of the sky, and in such a blessed sorority, there is no room for laxity. Just like it was with the Teutons and the Templars."

Minna simply nodded again, and felt the urge to point out that those two holy orders were, in fact, fraternities, but she quenched that and kept shut her lips. Atholl loved history and his slightly incorrect knowledge thereof, and when triggered, wouldn't stop babbling until dawn was suddenly dusk and then he would be upsetting the next morning over his own unmade paperwork.

"Eh? So a soldier always has to obey his officer? What if the officer's wrong?" the young Erica, only twelve years old, spoke, with skepticism lacing her high-pitched voice.

"The officer is never wrong." Such a bold statement! "You see, little cub, there is a grand battleplan that is come up by the generals, and little parts of those plans are distributed through all the ranks via the chain of command. This great plan must be followed for the success of the operation. As long as the soldier obeys and does his job without fear, there is no enemy that is insurmountable."

"In… insurmah… in-" Erica's rosy cheeks puffed, before she gave up. "What's that?"

"Something that's too hard to do," Minna helped.

"Oh. So the officer is never wrong?"

"Of course."

"But… how does that happen? My mom's always told me that you can't always be right."

Atholl sighed blissfully and ruffled the girl's hair. "You'll know more about these things when you grow up, little one."

"But I wanna learn about it now!" Erica stamped her foot, and Atholl's heart leapt, forcing him to pinch the little blondie's cheeks.

"Owie, owie! That hurts!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry, little cub, but you remind me of my granddaughter so much sometimes." Minna patted Erica's head and comforted her with a little hug, which, of course, Erica rejected.

"I'm not a kid anymore, so don't do that!"

"Now, now, you needed that hug," Minna chided.

Atholl continued, regardless. "You know, she's visiting the base next week. Maybe you could make friends-"

"Sir! Sir!" a panting soldier sprinted to just before the trio and interrupted. "We've got a plane crash. That unscheduled 109 banked hard and hit the woods just off the runway!"

Atholl's scarred face suddenly became grim, and pounded his fist against his chest once and hard in anger, startling the other three a bit. "That damnable son of a- I knew this would happen! You," he pointed to the messenger, "take care of Miss Hartmann here. Lieutenant Wilcke, I'm sorry, but I will have to substitute Miss Eppelmann in showing you what happens when there is indiscipline. Follow me. Steel your heart for what you are about to see."

A crash? Minna felt her heart sink. Uncertainty filled her chest as she wordlessly complied and began with gentle steps, that then soon turned into a run as Atholl was hurrying to find a Kubelwagen.

"Aww, I want to go too!" Erica pleaded, before being scooped up by the messenger. "Hey! I'm not a kid anymore, so put me down!"

"Ah, sorry, sorry."

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><p>Thankfully – however paradoxical the use of that word may be – the craft had crashed at the outskirts of the thick wood, where hoses could still be pulled to reach to water the site even as their parent trucks idled at quite some distance. Even before they were a kilometer away from it, Minna could still see the plumes of smoke that belched up into the sky. But now she was closer, and the orange of flame lit her thin frame from foot to forehead as she stared with widening eyes, she could swear, the frozen-still body of the pilot in the cockpit.<p>

The scene was too chaotic for the tastes of playwrights. There were people running to and fro, all of them to some degree sweaty and dirtied, acting on purpose and yet also in confusion. Shadowed in thick lines by the tall pine, there was some metal strewn about the forest floor, scrapes of what was once a magnificent war machine, that were stepped on by servicemen as they continued to douse the downed aircraft with copious amounts of foam. A stretcher team stood by next to a tree. The fire had burned out holes through the metal skin of the fuselage and the one wing that was still attached. A propeller arm had snapped and was now pathetically hanging limp.

Colonel Atholl grabbed Minna by the shoulder with strength, and extended his other hand towards the epicenter of the scene. "Do you see now what I mean? The boys will try to bring him out as fast as possible, but if he lives, then it is by divine intervention, a miracle of some sort. See how much of a waste it is, Wilcke! This is what happens when your men have got no respect for themselves, for their uniforms, and for you, and thusly, the Fatherland. I don't know if it was the instruction or the instructors or simply his humours that were lacking, but I'll have to-"

"Atholl!" a mature female voice interjected. "What do you think you're doing, bringing my student here without me knowing?"

The Colonel lowered his arm and returned the scowl of the woman with a calm gaze.

"I am simply demonstrating the effects of a lack of discipline in the fighting man. He becomes-"

"Minna," Linda Eppelmann caressed her ward's bewildered face. "You don't have to see this. Come on, let's go back to base."

Atholl, who had stepped aside, scowled. "You cannot baby your students forever. I know they're only young girls, but-"

"But what? She's only fourteen!"

"And? How is this different with you when it was 1914? Humanity is in peril! You should not coddle-"

"I listen not to the man who so disregards the lives of his men like they were nothing, a relic of the past who should not even be considered in today's world!"

The Colonel brought a hand up to his chest and dropped his jaw in shock. "Well, excuse me, you old hag! You know, I've had quite enough of you, ever since I've been assigned here and I watched you go about like some nanny-"

"We're leaving, Minna," Linda tugged at the young girl's hand. "Why'd you follow him to such a terrible place? You should have said no."

"Jesus, Maria…" he cursed lowly, rubbing his face in exasperation.

"Come along now, Minna. We can do something nice to get your mind off this."

"PERHAPS," Atholl's voice rose, and he threw his hand out forth in a hostile gesture. "You should stop using the lieutenant as a replacement for your dead daughter, you grounded witch! This-"

"You-!" Linda turned around and started pacing forwards. Atholl immediately regretted everything and stepped back worriedly. "You complete and utter baboon without tact! Why, I ought to-"

"Ooh, pretty!"

Both adults turned around to behold a little girl running in their direction.

"Hartmann?!"

"Erica?! You pig, you brought a child to-"

Her impromptu, panting guardian showed up through the wood. "Sir, I'm so sorry, sir, but she stole the car and-"

"Under your nose, a child stole a car?!" Atholl's beer belly hiccuped under the leather and the cloth in his incredulity. "How incompetent can you get?! How could her feet even reach the pedals?!"

"Erica, please, you're too young to see this-"

"Oh, so this is where the pilot died!"

"Erica!"

Atholl was mildly impressed, his eyes widening a bit. "Hot damn. Little girl's got some guts for saying that!"

"Will you just-"

"**SHUT UP!"**

Tears fell down Minna's face as she shouted, making rivulets down her rosy cheeks. She hiccuped in sorrowful sobs as she meekly pointed at the wreck where the rescuers had gathered into a bunch.

"Minna?" Erica held onto Minna's free hand, looking up at the taller girl confusedly.

"Look," the redhead said, as the teardrops gathered at the end of her chin and splattered onto the forest floor. "They're bringing him out. So please shut up."

The glass was jagged and shattered, though they had managed to wrench open the canopy. The stretcher team stood foremost to the cockpit as myriad hands gripped charred remains and struggled to extract them. The leather of the pilot's jacket had melted and fused to his blackened skin. His eye sockets were empty as the intense heat had liquidated their contents out. His limbs were stiff as the rigor mortis had set in, yet only through, by way of some sick black humor, his muscles being cooked to the crisp. And though the young Minna could only see parts of what remained of the pilot through the gaps in between the servicemen, she saw death all the same. And it made her heart sink; she could almost vomit.

The two adults bowed their head in embarrassment, though Linda, looking motherly with her ponytail and sweater which she was too much in a hurry to change into something more professional, was the first to step forth.

"Minna, honey…" her voice was overly gentle, cautious as she was.

"Whose… whose fault was this?" the girl continued to sob, staring dead ahead. Erica was wondering why she herself wasn't.

It took a moment for her to answer: a space of time lengthy enough for Atholl to interject. "It was the pilot's fault."

Linda flashed him a glare. He returned it with a calm stare. She returned to her two students, and crouched down beside them. Erica looked at her.

"He went out for a joyride," the younger said.

"Of which he did not have the skills to do safely." Linda replied. "He did something stupid."

Minna's eyes twinkled. The fire was out, and they had secured the corpse onto the stretcher. She was glad she wasn't anywhere close, or else the sight of the ghoul up close might have made her break down.

"Is- is that it, then?" she turned her head to face Linda. "That he did something stupid?"

The older woman closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, thinking of, really just how dumb it was, the way that a life had just been snuffed out. When she opened her eyes, her voice was level and calm.

"Yes."

There was a pause. She didn't want to believe it, but Minna took those words in, nodded in half-comprehension, and then leaned forward to hug her mentor who reciprocated gladly. Erica also joined in, wrapping her small arms around the two as much as she could. Atholl merely stayed back and lit himself a thick cigarette, puffing a smoke cloud in the trio's direction before his eyes found something interesting amongst the ruins of the wrecked aircraft.

The younger girl sobbed into her shoulder. "There, there," she cooed. "I know it's horrible."

"But it's important for your growth as a soldier, even if you are an airwoman," the Colonel supplemented offhandedly.

"Please!" Linda half-whispered to the tactless man, before resuming to rub the girl's back. Still, she could not find fault in that statement, if she were to be honest with herself. Maybe she did coddle her wards a bit much. The thought of these two young souls going off to war was unbearable, and yet it was a necessity.

"It's okay, lieutenant," little Erica chimed in. "He did his best, even though his best wasn't enough."

"Yes, I guess you could put it that way, little one, however unfortunate that is."

They kept still that way for about a minute or two until Linda stood up. "Now then, little ones, how about we leave this dreary place? Or would you like to stay some more, Minna?"

"No," she wiped errant drops off her eyes, and sneezed with a quickly-procured handkerchief from her pocket. "No. I'm fine. Let's go back."

She tried to look like she wasn't fazed anymore. Linda simply returned the smile that she struggled so hard to maintain.

"Very good."

With their mentor constantly holding their shoulders reassuringly from behind, Minna and Erica returned to their barrack and spent the rest of the day on the bed, as classes and other activities were suspended due to the emergency.

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><p>The loss of a life was indeed tragic. Yet, how could the man wearing bulky goggles even begin to comprehend the sorrow when his grin, shit-eating as it was, spread from his left ear to his right?<p>

He took the gadget off with both hands and shook his head vigorously. He stretched his arms and blinked his eyes. He continued to laugh and say the name of the Lord in vain. Euphoric, he was, in the embrace of this new technology.

His eyes swung to his monitor, and there, in the bottom right: a little string of text, its simplicity belying the visceral complexity of the way on how he died.

_[KG508] MagosMechanicus (Bf 109 E-3) has crashed._

Though full-immersion virtual reality was still quite a few decades away, he was content with what he had right now. The test run was, admittedly, amazing, and he could not wait to play the real deal.

He navigated the mouse cursor and pressed a few meaningful buttons. In but a few moments, he was lining up to partake in gratuitous carnage along with dozens of other sociopathic folk. He leaned back on his chair to reflect on his recent experience, and expressed his conclusions with simple words:

"God-damn. That was awesome."

And he could not wait to experience dying in first-person again.

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><p><strong>AN: We're back. And better than ever.**


	2. Two Devils and Three Thousand Angels

**A/N: More to fix formatting errors than anything else, it is here wherein I declare that I claim no ownership over Strike Witches.**

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><p><strong>ONCE MORE INTO THE RIFT<strong>

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><p><strong>June 13, 1940<br>London, Britannia**

Ten months of periodic attacks have not sullied the beauty of London to any noticeable degree. Much of what was built during the older days of the Empire still stood high and proud, consistently impressing locals and foreigners alike with the archaic charm of their Victorian brickwork and architecture. Indeed, it seemed that Big Ben's perpetually confident stature and face, with heavy anti-aircraft guns idling at his feet, was a large middle finger grandly displayed at the collective Neuroi Hives without any shyness, even as some buildings in the capital now bore holes and at least some rubble perpetually clogged a street or two. Still, looting and petty crimes were at quite a minimum, and the people went about their daily business, with keeping a gas mask close at hand and the abundance of uniformed men on the streets being the only major differences from life without war.

Every now and then, a patrol plane would fly over the Illuminati Cafè, an old coffeehouse whose ownership shifted around quite a few families since it was established in 1835 over at old St. Paul's Way. Though the intersection up ahead was piling debris from the neighboring apartment block that had collapsed and still was, gradually, the coffeehouse was by no means destitute; in fact, its patrons and staff were predominantly middle-class, but a certain man inside was a complete exception to that.

As the store owner shooed away orphaned children from the front door, the unassuming gentleman with the thin mustache and the round spectacles at the far corner stopped twirling his pen and lightly smacked it onto the table, the sides of his lips tugged into a frown. Heinrich Himmler, head of the Schutzstaffel and Gestapo of Imperial Karlsland, then ran his hands down his face to vent his bottled-up frustration. He groaned heavily, before a little thump made him notice the hot cup being served to him by that one sweet waitress, whom he gave an appreciative smile and reassured that he was quite alright when asked.

He felt his stare lingering on the girl's back before he quashed errant thoughts away. He may have been a mastermind organizer, but keeping two affairs in secret at the same time was already bearing down on him, and he surely wasn't going to add a third. Breathing in deeply, he grabbed a folder from the thick stack he kept at the side and opened it, dragging his eyes all over its contents as he reviewed.

There was an incident in Essen, just as there were two in Karelia and a staggering seven in Stalingrad. Unknown flyers and tracked vehicles that came and went like thieves in the night, yet they were not Neuroi. For but a few minutes they would be on the radar dish before suddenly disappearing, and there was an instance in Kuban where entire tank platoons engaged each other before their wrecks faded away like ghosts. Eyewitnesses abounded, but encouragement from his agents silenced all media before they could report on the subject. If anything, the world didn't need another morale sink.

Himmler, though he hadn't witnessed these events firsthand, believed in these reports however far-fetched they seemed to be. For in the Emperor Ferdinand's inner circle, practice and study of the occult was nothing new, and to further harness the power of magic and beyond for the Master Race was a noble pursuit. To do this, he had specialized personnel that he himself examined, interviewed, and picked from the shining stars of the Shutzstaffel for the job of seeking out ancient sources of power. In the guise of civilians, these spies crawled around catacombs and turned over sarcophagi, with ancient tomes like the Bible and guesswork being their only guides, though their background and skills outshone even that handicap.

But even then, teams Alpha and Gamma have reported either complete lies to appease him or nothing substantial since September last year. Lies! Like they thought of him dumb enough to believe their excuses for laziness and incompetence. Two years in Jerusalem, six months in Acre and two in Damascus; and only now were they scrounging about Solomon's Temple? Those fools should have been at the cusp of discovering the Holy Grail by now! And yet their telegrams were nothing but airy bullshit.

There would have to be a culling of their ranks soon. Perhaps he could invite a few witches in to replace them? No, no, that's too risky. Goering would find out. If that fat fuck were good at anything, it's snooping his nose around like a ghost and then embarrassing you in front of everyone, whispering gently a litany of loaded statements in the most passive-aggressive and subtle of all manners and vehemently denying any hostility with expert skill when accused thereof, as General Karl found out the hard way when he mistreated Goering's personal guard.

He turned a page and set his eyes further into team Epsilon's report, opting to reread the autopsy on the Essen aircraft, whose corpse thankfully took hours to fade away, enough that they could photograph the machine, take it apart and examine it at length.

And it so appeared that a company named "Messerschmitt" manufactured this particular _exact copy_ of Messerscharf's Bf 109 Emil-3 in one of the Regensburg factory complexes. Yet further investigation undertaken in that particular factory unit revealed that the serial numbers did not match anything no matter how much his agents filed through the cabinets, and that the aircraft parts, if the algorithm was followed, were revealed to have been manufactured in _2014_, of all years. If anything, this was an explosive confirmation of the supernatural. After years of nothing but vagueness, he finally had something concrete that he could follow up on and hope to master and assimilate, and for this, he was rather content.

_Time travelers. Lovely,_ Himmler thought, without a bit of sarcasm. He'd found out earlier that reading and rereading this particular bit of paper alleviated a lot of stress.

Some might consider it an annoying or even a disgusting practice, but Himmler cared not for the opinions of others as he licked his finger and turned to another page. Flicking through the technical details, he settled his eyes on the attached photographs showing the dead body of the pilot. The corpse was too charred and ugly to identify, but he knew full well that the man's origins were not on this present Earth.

"I hope your friends know about you," he muttered, tapping the close-up image of the pilot's necrotic face with a light fingertip. "I hope they come soon. I want to meet them."

"Meet who?"

Himmler looked up, and beheld a similarly thin-mustached man, with a large forehead and chin that made the rest of his face look slightly dwarfed. Clad in simple garments, he attracted no suspicion; but Himmler readily recognized his friend, and gave him a warm smile.

"Time travelers, Maloney."

"Time travelers now, is it? I thought you were going for the Ark of the Covenant," Air Vice-Marshall Trevor Maloney said, smiling in turn as he sat down opposite of the Karlslander.

"And I still am. But this project, even in its infant age, has already borne seed, which I can then plant to bear fruit. It's become one of my top priorities with the surprising amount of progress we've made on it. Congratulations once again on your promotion, by the way."

"Thank you. That bastard Dowding actually objected to it after the ceremony, though."

"Really? How unpleasant."

"Oh yes. Said that to give me more responsibility would damage the Empire's air corps due to my 'dangerously unconventional tactics,' that are 'still largely unproven and likely to meet in failure' like he knows who I am and what my stratagems are. But anyway – let's not talk about that." He relaxed, sinking into his chair, however possible that was, considering that it was made out of wood. "So," he adopted a thin layer of ridicule in his tone. "What's this about time travelers now, Heinrich?"

"Dearest Trevor, I find the inflection of your voice incredibly disagreeable," Himmler took his glasses off and folded them into his breast pocket. "You think this is a waste of time."

"Heavens, no, not that harsh! I'm just a little skeptical. What you're pursuing is science that is at the periphery of even what we would consider as fringe."

"Indeed?" Himmler tilted his head and raised a brow.

"Indeed," Maloney replied, so surely like it were such an obvious thing.

"What, then, of your Warlock Project?" Himmler piercingly shot. Maloney took a moment to respond.

"Warlock is, I would dare say, more achievable with what we've got at the moment. Do you know what I think, Heinrich? You're chasing ghosts."

"And I might just be, literally," Himmler smiled. "But what's the problem in that?"

"The fact that you are, old friend!"

Himmler waved his hand dismissively. "Nonsense."

"Nonsense how?"

"You are too close-minded, and surprisingly so. Really, what's the difference between my projects and Warlock?"

"Practicality. We know enough-"

"No, we don't," Himmler disrespectfully cut. "You underestimate the Hive."

Maloney shook his head. "Friend, you aggrandise our foes and belittle our most brilliant minds. It turns out that the alien invaders are but simple beasts! You may not believe it, but I will show you when you have the time to visit the labs. My eggheads, that good lad Ostermann especially, have found out what makes them tick. They are no longer enigmas, only highly-complex machines."

"Is that so?"

"It is," Maloney affirmed.

"And with this supposed leap in knowledge, you plan to control their core units, how?"

Maloney leaned over and put his elbows on the table. "Sir Rutherford, the physicist, and his team are building a machine that will emulate the very thought waves of the Hives. It is still only in the speculation stage and involves quite a bit of magic both literal and figurative, but with enough funding and other material support, we can get this all done in three years. Which is why, Heinrich, that I asked of you to think of my proposal. I need your support."

Himmler closed his eyes and breathed in deeply before adopting a stern look. "I will not cut away funding for the research and development of rocketry and jet engines and strikers."

"Then take away from some other source. Like your excavations in Cairo, for example. Brother, you don't actually _believe_ that the Ark of the Covenant may actually be there, right?"

"We will find that out when the time comes."

"Time," Maloney pointed out, "is not something we have in great abundance."

Himmler yet again quirked a brow. "Trevor, you ask for patience yet seem to lack any of it."

Maloney leaned back once more on his chair. His eyes were fixed upon the the Karlslander who sat opposite of him and against the wall. He talked slowly to emphasize his determination:

"Because I know that Warlock will work."

"I know you do, and your convictions are enough to consider damaging the Witch Corps." Himmler pointed out. "And I don't like that. We owe our girls a lot, you know."

"We cannot rely on them forever. They are small in number and hard to replace or even raise. Hell, witches were no better than veteran stormtroopers until Dr. Miyafuji invented the striker unit. What I seek is to give our conventional units – infantry, armored, and air – the same amount of power that the witches have by incorporating the strength of our enemy."

"A strength that shifts, taints and corrupts all it touches. A strength that we still do not understand, and struggle to even begin to. To tinker with such power is to court death for his affections," Himmler warned.

"Ah, but desperate men do desperate things, especially those who love their race so much that they would risk the scorn of all on Earth to try and preserve it," was Maloney's self-justification. "And like I said before, your doubts are exaggerated; the Neuroi are not as complex as, I'm sure, they would like us to believe." When Himmler left a moment of silence hanging, he continued. "Heinrich, my friend, don't tell me you've already forgotten how quickly Ostmark fell to them and how they're now pushing deeply into Orussian territory. We're holding them back only because of superior numbers and the witches, and even they, for all their might, die. At this rate, I fear that-"

"And so do I. We are fragile, and I know this. No matter how much plate we equip our panzers with, those lasers always cut through. Thus, I'm looking for unconventional methods-"

"Like finding the god-damned Ark of the Covenant and chasing time travelers," Maloney interjected.

"… to supplement the war effort." Himmler finished, speaking slowly, after a beat. "It is not a waste of time. Artifacts of great power, forged by wise ancients, lie hidden deep beneath tombs, catacombs and ruins. It's only up to us to unearth them, and use them in our fight for survival."

"You're chasing ghosts. Like I said, it's wasted effort," Maloney scowled lightly.

"Hardly," Himmler's calm demeanor remained unfazed.

"Yes it is."

"Nonsense," the Karlslander waved his hand.

"You are driving me mad, Heinrich."

"You haven't a monopoly on truth, you know. Do not dismiss my work as mere unfounded flights of fancy. Just as I consider your proposal, I ask that you open your mind to my ideas."

"But it's hard; it sounds so stupid!"

"Well, that's your problem, however unfortunate that is to me."

"What the hell happened to you when you met that Hitler fellow?"

"Absolutely nothing. All of this is a result of my personal pursuit of knowledge."

"It has blinded you to what is correct."

"Like I said, you haven't a monopoly on truth. Don't be so quick to judge."

Maloney sat there stewing in frustration, finding himself silent before Himmler's adamant mental fortress. The arrogant sod across him turned a cheek slightly to the side and cocked an eyebrow up, as if to say, "well?" But just before Maloney could speak, the waitress from before took advantage of the steady silence and approached.

"Good morning, sir. May I take your order?" Her voice was soft as she handed out the menu. Maloney took a glance at the card and then became bewildered.

"My, my, my," he said, his voice suddenly agreeable and free from choleric taint. "So many names in Gallian and Italian, and I'm not a coffee person…" He looked up at Himmler. "What do you recommend?"

"A latte. They make good ones here. Thank you for reminding me to take a sip, by the way." And he did so from his cup. "It's cooled down quite a bit, thanks to you."

"Oh, please," Maloney rolled his eyes as he looked to the waitress. "A latte, then."

"Anything else, sir?"

He pulled his head back slightly. "Why would I want two cups of coffee?"

"They actually serve cakes here." Himmler kindly assisted the waitress.

"Oh, do they? I wouldn't know it from the façade outside. How unexpectedly fancy. But my, it doesn't say here in the menu, though."

"It's here." Himmler physically pointed the section out.

"Goodness, it's all in Gallian!"

"I personally recommend the Mille-feuille, sir," The waitress offered. "Three layers separated with fillings of vanilla cream, with the top glazed white with icing and long chocolate strips. It's very delicious."

"I'm sure it is," Maloney was convinced, though more of the sweetness of her voice than of the quality of the food. "I'll have a plate of that, then."

"Alright. Anything else, sir?"

"No, that would be all," he responded kindly.

"Alright, so that's a caffè latte and a slice of mille-feuille for Mister Trevor, and… is there anything you need, Mister Himmler?"

"No, I'm fine."

"Alright. Mister Trevor, it will take ten minutes."

"I can wait."

"Okay. Please excuse me." She curtly bowed and left. Maloney stared at her back for a moment, and waited till she was out of earshot before speaking.

"What a pleasant girl. 'Mister Trevor,' she called me."

"Oh yes, she's a bit new but quite decent at her job. You fell for the cake thing pretty damned cleanly."

"I don't think I'll come to regret it, though, if the food's as good as she says."

Himmler took a sip of his coffee, further ruining the astrology-themed latte art without even appreciating it. "So, anyway," he cleared the air for a new topic. "Do you want to continue where we had left off?"

"No," Maloney sighed. "It's too early in the day to be stressed like this. Let's save that discussion in a fortified bunker or some other secure venue," There was no sarcasm in that statement. "How about we talk about something else. Like…" He drew the word out, thinking.

"Want to gossip about celebrities?" Himmler joked, smiling.

Maloney gladly returned it. "My, Heinrich, I thought you'd never ask!"

* * *

><p><strong>February 20, 1944<br>The Strait of Dover**

The scenery of and over the Strait was overly calm and peaceful for the plight of one of the countries that sandwiched it. For one, the breeze that softly guided the lazy cumulus was gentle, and the waves far below only lapped at each other, in contrast to when they had tried to swallow one another in the storm the week prior. The sun that glared harshly continued to rear upwards in its ascent towards high noon, but a few of the rays that it sent down were perplexed when, all of a sudden, they were caught and reflected off by a large skin of metal.

Out of nowhere, out of the ether, and into the very air, came an aeroplane. As it happened, it was already going at a lightning speed, and the juxtaposition of one moment of complete and utter silence to the blaring roar of a powerful engine in action was stark. Through the canopy of the Hurricane, the pilot looked around with brightening eyes at his immediate surroundings. The graphics utterly astounded him! This, all of this, really, blew away so-called 'next-gen' consoles out of atmosphere. Individual scratches on the glass, such detailed textures, were each lit up by the resource-hungry and yet-so-efficient shader system, and it seemed as though every millimeter of surface had its own set of normal-maps and bump-maps and a variety of other techno-jargon he had no interest in learning. The anti-aliasing was either perfect or there really were about a million polygons to every object as no matter how hard he scrutinized the edges, he could find not even a single jagged contour.

The sun was unbearable to look at and made a lightshow of his cockpit, and so he banked leftward. And further was he amazed as the wing blocked off sunlight and shadow stretched all over this side of the craft. This was not to mention the sensation of him actually following the movements of the machine in first-person: the world turned as it should and did as his vision swirled accordingly. Shivers crawled up and down his spine at this; the immersion was enough to almost make him sick.

He didn't even realize till that previous flight that such graphical fidelity was possible in War Thunder and with current technology. If all of this ran at sixty frames per second – or maybe even more and he didn't know – on his aging desktop computer, then the only thing left to do was to develop the sufficient input devices and artificial intelligence in order to make anime real! Oh hell, he could barely contain himself. The implications of what were before his very eyes were deep and potentially revolutionary, and yet he hadn't gotten any word of this from any forum, imageboard or gaming press site.

This particular sortie was yet again only a test flight. He had opted to see what it was like in an arcade match, but the game reported the mode as unavailable for when it was running with VR. A great shame, really, but he didn't mind the loss. Gameplay-wise, playing with the Rift on was suicide. Otherwise, it made for amazing eye candy. Candy so sweet that if ever he wanted a vacation, he could now just put on the gadget and hop into a test flight like this one. It was certainly cheaper and cleaner than actually having to go to Hawaii or some other overhyped destination, and he could bring deadly luxuries like autocannons that would have otherwise been illegal at any tourist trap.

Perhaps this was what Gaijin had intended all along. In the menu that popped up to customize his sortie, there were new options that allowed him better control over his flight environment. Of these, the most prominent were the abilities to choose the date of the flight, its time right up to the minute, and the location. When the third – really, a tasty hint at what was to come along with World War mode's release – was selected, he was given a zoomable world map where he could pick individual airbases to take off from, or even pop up directly in the air with the placement of a free marker and a little readjusting of the also-new altitude option. Though, he was a bit perplexed at the disappearance of the weather settings.

In this current case, he merely clicked at a random point on the blue gap separating Britain and France, struggled through Gajin's love of drop-down menus in setting his starting angels to 3,000 meters, decided on a random date, and then clicked the go button. The game world loaded for but a split-second, and now he was suddenly here. Simple and efficient. Kudos to the development team, for they had made War Thunder a very friendly program technology-wise!

He leveled the plane, yet his lips refused to be, still stuck were they in a rictus smile. At the very distance, he could see the white Cliffs of Dover. When he turned his head to face the other side, he could see the far shores of France. Fat cumulus, puffy and cotton-like, rolled along with him, drifting upon the winds, and whenever he strained the ailerons, he could see white streaks making a trail as his Hurricane's wings cut through the air. His pupils dilated at these sights, and his heart leapt at the romance of the whole situation.

For he was flying! Well, the computer was flying; he was running on mouse aim, after all. But he, through the magic of technology, had broken away from the restrictive shackles of terra firma and was now experiencing freedom in a purer form. This was something that only a privileged few could partake in, a most supreme luxury, given that the Rift was, and let us be honest, a relatively useless contraption that smelled of nothing but extreme profligacy whose two-hundred-dollar price tag could be spent at something more fulfilling.

And he was a profligate, Magos admitted. But so what? He was having fun, and also wanted to find out if the terrain enjoyed the same graphical fidelity to reality close up as his cockpit and the sky. And so he did. A wave of the mouse, a pull and push of the flight stick, and he was diving. He set back the throttle to fifty percent till he remembered that he was playing on arcade physics. In a moment of indecision, his mind juggled the merits and consequences of going at full speed, like the rush of feel-good adrenaline and the risk of a minor heart attack, but, ah, what the hell? It's only a video game. Granted, it was one with such surreal photorealism, but still a game nonetheless.

Magos duly rediscovered that when you go past how many hundreds of kilometers per hour, your plane rattles like a powerful earthquake. The ribbing on the canopy vibrates like hell and the flight stick becomes harder to handle due to control surface stiffening, as was evidenced with his virtual hand now shaking as it struggled to move the stick. The most terrifying sound also plays from every corner as the airframe crackles from all the stress that should have torn it asunder by now. And it was brilliant, just bloody brilliant! His heart leapt yet again in excitement as the waters that he stared at gradually increased in scale. He sank back into his chair in real life, and his avatar followed right up to the last millimeter of his neck. The Rift's new arcane technomancy had mastered and allowed for lateral movement and other kinds thereof, tracking his head with absolute precision and accuracy with not even a single noticeable bit of delay. He was fully immersed at this time, and was gasping excessively.

He could now make out the small towns and villages that smudged and ruined portions of the greenery up ahead, and also the various ships that patrolled the Channel close to the English coast. He went in low, hugging the waters as his ribcage hugged his pounding heart. Obsolete-looking vessels whose smokestacks belched clouds of either black or white or grey, or even a combination of the three, made wedge-shaped irregularities on the blue surface. A destroyer squadron, accompanied by smaller patrol boats, was sailing roughly perpendicular to him, headed maybe towards the west.

But a mere ten meters or so of atmosphere separated him and his machine from a very terrible way to die as he rode it like a mad Egyptian charioteer into a Roman shield wall. Though his senses were too preoccupied by other things to notice, the crew of the destroyer whom he was barreling straight for were actually hollering and saluting at him in good cheer. A few winced in his daring approach before he pulled straight up at two hundred meters away from the port side and performed an exquisite barrel roll purely on accident. The men on decks both near and far, thinking that he was doing a friendly acrobatic performance, waved their handkerchiefs and tipped their hats off to him.

One of the captains in the tall superstructures whistled in appreciation at Magos' misinterpreted daringness, clapping his hands rapidly and with vigor as the errant pilot performed a loop around his ship, not to show off, but to lose speed. "Good show!" the aging man said. "Bloody good show! May God bless the RAF."

Magos had set the skin for his Hurricane to that of the night-fighter variant. The roundels of the British Royal Air Force – which were identical to the _Britannian _one, mind you – could still easily be recognized, given that their bright colors contrasted against the rest of the dark paint job. At the right side of the craft's body, just below the canopy, thirty small balkenkreuzen neatly formed rank and file in silent testament to Magos' decent skill as a player; and after it, before the engine's exhaust stacks, was placed the Axis sea dragon icon. Neither of these decals were mirrored, and this fitted accordingly to the player's aesthetic sense.

Regardless, the black Hurricane pitched its nose up, seemingly for another fantastic loop, but when it did not further describe an arc and hit terminal velocity, hung still in the air with its nose pointed in vain at heaven, the cheers of the sailors died down into murmurs of concern. The engine, which now purred instead of growled, found itself forcibly dragged downwards by gravity to behold again the promised embrace of the sea. And yet, it sparked to life and once more roared greatly and mechanically, and Magos narrowly missed the water by literal feet when he had gotten himself leveled out and fully away from the dangerous cusp of the half-stall.

The crowd went insane. To them, this was yet another magnificent stunt, and to some, the pilot was showing off too much for their tastes. Still, it isn't far from hyperbole to say that one of them strained a wrist from flicking his handkerchief so rapidly at the triumphant aeroplane passing by. Even from the railings on the deck, they could see the pilot's face from the narrow distance in between them, and the low altitude and speed that he now flew in. There was a look of surprise on the flyer's face, but he could be excused for this, given that the game was rendering how many hundreds of bodies, each with their own custom cheering animation, fully in glorious 3D. Gaijin's new mastery of graphics was such that if their LoD degraded with distance, he sure as hell didn't notice it.

Though all this was truly fantastic, Magos could not help but think that his feelings of amazement were becoming a bit banal. He felt his tired jaw protest at yet another audible gasp, and his bulging eyes, which he had to consciously blink, drying before the lenses of the Rift. Regardless, he gorged himself with the scenery and circled around the fleet quite a few times before deciding to cross the shore and head inland. The cheers had already died down when the angelic white cliffs of Dover finally entered his wake.

Of course, he was completely oblivious to the fact that this entire incident would earn him more than a passing mention in quite a few war memoirs. As he went away without even a simple wing salute to say farewell, privates, sergeants and lieutenants and high-ranking officers alike wrote of the mysterious black Hurricane ace who, even for but a moment, raised their spirits and further cemented their courage. The few who would survive the war would, whether immediately or decades after the conflict's end, go on to compile and publish what they had written for historians both amateur and professional to peruse. Amongst the passages, quite a few were dedicated to the still-unknown Magos.

He spent perhaps the next two hours simply flying about before his stomach demanded that he have dinner. His exit from the world was humble and inconspicuous. From afar, he was but a silent dot that simply entered a cloud, and then vanished utterly.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Boy, Himmler and Maloney sure are good friends, aren't they?**


	3. Unknown Target, 5 Kilometers

**A/N: More to fix formatting errors than anything else, it is here wherein I declare that I claim no ownership over Strike Witches.**

**This particular chapter joins the main character with canon happening for the first time, with Magos inserting right into the 3****rd**** episode of the 1****st**** season.**

**I believe that the time-and-time-again-proven fact that Japanese translates horribly into English has tampered with the second half of this chapter.**

**Regardless, it was still fun to write.**

**Do enjoy it warmly.**

* * *

><p><strong><em>Review responses:<em>**

ArchAngel117: _You have my blessing on your newly created story. I do not mind the unashamed plagiarism – in your case – for mimicry is the most exquisite form of flattery._

MODERN ARMED FORCE: _While the introduction of another Rift-empowered branch of the modern armed force would produce interesting results, I am loathe to do so, simply because of the work involved and it's hard to be attached to all those characters at once._

arctivemars828: _'Mango' is a good nickname for Magos, I agree._

Guest1: _Thank you._

SBSdk: _Wonder and speculate to your heart's content. More will be revealed as the story carves itself out._

linkstore49: _Nope. Loathe to reintroduce them._

Guest2: _Well, YouTubers like those people are actually very – and I emphasize – very unpleasant people to play with in-game when they're not streaming. They are actually rather arrogant, and this I experienced myself, thus I am loathe to put them in._

BbK2242: _The content of your review is what all future reviewers for this story should aspire to create. Thank you for your extensive feedback; it is things like this that help me better myself as a (very amateur) writer and, dare I say, as a person._

* * *

><p><strong>ONCE MORE INTO THE RIFT<strong>

* * *

><p>"<em>He performed the most spectacular of shows. There I was, on the railing with Cormick and McGuire, as he pulled his machine upwards only to have it stall in the air; we could hear the engine failing. I swear my heart stopped as I saw him fall but my eyes kept looking as he plummeted to certain doom. The entire deck shushed, and some even began to pre-emptively exclaim at his nearing crash. But then, inches away from the water, he leveled his black Hurricane in one magnificent swoop and swung by the starboard. We all cheered and shouted at yet another amazing and dangerous stunt, but I got a good look at the pilot's face as I was at the edge of the ship – it seemed as if he himself was shocked at what he had just been through! He never performed something as reckless as that afterwards. I bet the fear was put into him, that boastful daredevil. Regardless, he became the talk of the mess for quite a while."<em>

_-Excerpt from 'Battlestations: The Struggle Against the Neuroi in the North Sea', published in 1974, authored by PO Daniel B. Mayers, Britannian Royal Navy, ret._

* * *

><p><strong>Late February, 1944<br>Normandy, Gallia**

The mysterious pilot went away like a silent spectre and reappeared with the same suddenness to the indifference of the land defiled below - look beyond the charred hills and the errant wrecks of Matildas, above the canopies of ruined wood; turn your gaze up high and into the very skies, and you may see, provided the deftness of your eye is sufficient, a particular dot that had just shot out of a heavy-looking, fat cloud, dark grey and pregnant with water.

Magos nearly jumped out of his seat in real life. Sweet-sounding Beethoven was trashed away by a bulldozer going beyond the speed of light and replaced him and the main menu with the thundering din and the battering wind of a punishing storm. It was with similarly startling immediateness that his canopy became wet and water rolled down its scratched glass in many rivulets, and his environment transitioned from overly peaceful to a leap towards chaos. All around him were the towering bodies of the clouds of an angry weather system, high, mighty and foreboding, that flashed occasionally with an earth-shattering boom and an all-encompassing, blinding flash of light.

The gale wailed like a crying banshee and the raindrops attacked the sleek surface of his craft with more rapidity than even a machinegun, making a constant, ominous thrum that further muffled the sounds of his graphics card's cooling fan going at a hundred percent. Lightning struck again, flashing at some distance away and painting crisp shadows all over the cockpit, though his pounding heart was more prepared this time.

"Holy hell," he uttered a paradox. "Are storms this bad when flying in real life?"

Truly a good question that he wasn't about to Google.

His hand unclenched and relaxed however it could and blindly found its way back to the mouse. Then he had some control over the turbulent flight of his machine, the same Hurricane that he had flown yesterday night. His eyes, for a moment, glanced over the bumps, rivets, and the various instruments in the familiar cockpit, though he took no particular interest in any of them, before they swung over to the side and peered over the windows to examine his grey and deadly flight environment at length.

The entire sky seemed to hate him. To compensate for its being mute, it roared instead in another, more physical way. "Oh my God," the name of the Lord was yet again said in vain through those careless lips. "It's like a fantasy world…"

And technically, it kind of was, but the sheer immersion of it all convinced him otherwise.

The brilliant sun became but a bright glow that pierced even through the thick bodies of the clouds as he dipped his Hurricane into lower altitude. There, in the airy gap between the cumulus and the ground, it was darker and utterly saturated with falling rain. No reprieve could be had from the downfall as the entire area was fully in the jurisdiction of the storm that persisted incessantly. The scale of the terrain of terra firma increased as Magos further sank and gained speed, and he furrowed his brow at a few particularly depressing yet still awe-inspiring sights.

There were firstly the towns and cities. They were black, ruined and abandoned. You'd think there would be at least a few houses with their lights on, but this wasn't the case, and it was all shrouded under the overcast clouds of this early morning. Hugging the trees for a while, he also scrutinized the battle damage in greater detail, discovering husks that had been consumed by flames and architecture that had been broken by gratuitous and liberal applications of heavy explosive force. Craters collected rainwater and became murky pools as Magos in his Hurricane passed overhead snapped power cables and their posts, which had long fallen. A few trucks lay dead on the roads that eventually lead to the nearby port, the corpses inside, so hardheaded in life, having failed to evacuate soon enough and couldn't protest that fact in death.

Secondly, the destruction of the man-made was mirrored on the natural. He could not help but notice the forests choking in an incessant, low miasma that seemed to be depriving their trees, which were, at the time, bare of leaves, of health. This thick fog hung about the ground and its thin clouds coiled and rolled along the increasingly desolate land of France. The pilot in the roaring war machine quirked a brow as he steadily circled around his immediate environs, and thought of the Germans using poison gas. What else could it be? What a heinous act!

But one thing he could not think of was literally any tourist site that let him view first-hand and at such a scale the scars that modern warfare left on the Earth. All of this continued to affirm his confidence in the Rift replacing or at least making a huge dent on the tourism industry.

A plane-shaped blob emerged out of the darkness that crawled on the ground as Magos finally left the shadow of the rain and cruised over the cloudless but still desolate fields of shrinking greenery that seemed to be on the retreat from the miasma, backpedalling towards the coast. As was characteristic of Normandy, imperfectly straight hedgerows made demarcations for which plots of land – whose use escaped Magos' mind and knowledge – could be subdivided into. In other video games, these made for perfect cover and concealment whose defenders almost always proved hard to dislodge to any attacking force; in War Thunder, it was all just props and scenery.

Add the magical lenses of the Oculus Rift, however, and these seemingly unimportant fields were suddenly parts of a living, breathing world almost indistinguishable from the real one if it weren't for the HUD that remained constantly in his vision. Indeed, the player had taken note of the neatness of it all: everything in the heads-up display was no longer a 2D icon superimposed upon everything, but a 3D hologram that floated just before his very eyes. There would be a delay before they followed the turn of his head, and this paradoxically immersed him further.

Yet, this was but a test flight. If anything, he was perplexed at the fact that this endless but functional map, so grand in scale and rich in diversity, was yet to be shown in even a bare-bones demonstration of the promised World War mode. Surely, Gajin's servers and shekels were enough to bear the heavy burden that an MMO demanded, and the Rift surely could not have been a prerequisite for it, so why was this, all of this, from the bleakness of wartorn Normandy close up, to the sweet white freedom of the skies, not yet mentioned in any game-related news either official or unofficial, nor implemented in a way that would surely have brought them more money from their supportive playerbase?

He did not know the answer. Irregardless, Magos felt of this still a sweet treat. He had always been a fan of flight simulators and immediately jumped upon War Thunder after being heartbroken from Fighter Ace's sad death. While not that good of a spiritual successor to the latter game, the former now offered this: a reproduction of real life visuals and audio, in a 1:1 world wherein one had powers beyond that of the norm. And he reveled in it.

Unfortunately, though, this silent jubilance was interrupted with the characteristic half-hiss, half-whistle of his radar reporting an enemy contact. Instinctively, his eyes swung to the up and the right, and there, on that one meaningful circle, were two red crosses that hugged its southeastern perimeters. Magos banked right and craned his head up and up again to the side, and from the crown of a particularly tall storm cloud, there were two small but stark dots that he knew full and well were racing for him with deadly intent.

Magos grinned. The lone enemy truck that sat idly by the airfield in every test flight was gone, and in its stead were two of its aerial brethren. Knowing how the AI mimicked real pilots' flawed human actions and decisions, he swung his eager machine around to try and meet them in a head-on, to defeat his first enemies in VR mode forthwith and swiftly in one magnificent joust, or two at most. The propellered nose swung up to allow more air to lift the craft up by its flat belly and Magos began to slowly gain altitude while the inverse happened to his opponents, who possessed the altitude advantage. His eyes were trained on them as his crosshair wobbled by a few inches at their general direction. His fingers, both in real life and in the virtual space, twitched as the raindrops met again the glass of his Hurricane's canopy and the storm welcomed him again into its territory.

Ten kilometers, nine kilometers, seven kilometers, five kilometers – finally, the generic circles that better indicated their position as opposed to their actual, physical, but blurry dots in the distance transformed into simple but meaningful phrases:

_Unknown target,5.43 km  
>Unknown target, 5.12 km<em>

Five kilometers and closing. At three hundred kilometers per hour, this was a petty distance. The pendulum swung at every second; Magos furrowed his brow, pursed his lips, and stared at his foe through the crosshairs. Two kilometers, one and a half; a slight pressure on the mouse and his guns would-

_**ZING!**_

Bright red light streaked out forth faster than he could react and bathed the entirety of the Hurricane in its luminance as a laser beam as thick as a man's arm missed him by only feet. Particularly unlucky raindrops utterly vaporized immediately around the physicality of this initial lance of pure energy, which was followed by others in a rapid succession in an interval that measured only a centi-second. They all missed, but they proved distracting enough for Magos to catch the sight of only the tail of one of his foes as they both zoomed by and closely so, and his plane rocked in the turbulent air in their wake without even firing its guns.

"What the hell was that?!"

He swung his mouse to the right and his plane followed obediently. One wing sank and the other rose as he turned to meet them again, and they, the same to him. Crystal photo-sensors shared gazes with human eyes as the two combating parties regarded each other from many hundreds of meters: to one, a helpless babe, a juicy target, set upon by two hungry wolves; to the other, a couple of completely bewildering, boomerang-shaped enigmas he wasn't sure what to make of yet. Under the indifferent gaze of the stormy sky, these two opposing parties described horizontal arcs in the air that terminated in the introduction of a straight flight path, which, eventually, resulted in twelve machine guns and four discharge ports blazing away at each other.

"Oh sweet blessed virgin, protect me from- agh mein Gott-!"

Magos tried hard not to shut his eyes. He failed. As if the turbulence around from deciding to play on Realistic Battle physics wasn't enough, his plane shook further from its twelve automatic weapons firing in unashamed chorus. Sensory overload and an urge to vomit assaulted him as red flashed all around simultaneously with the white of striking lightning and the terrible noise everything made. When the pass was done, and the game reported him as having achieved a hit with the enemy failing to do so, he decided that playing in first-person was a detriment, gameplay-wise. So he pressed V to change his view. Alas, a string of text instead mocked him at the bottom of his sight:

_Third person view not available in VR mode_.

It was an incomplete statement, lacking a linking verb to join the subject and the adjective in perfect harmony. There were many phrases like this in the game, as a result of half-baked localization efforts by the development team. Not that the playerbase really minded, of course, but Magos, at the moment, differed, and not without reason.

"Well!" Magos drew the word out at this comically ill-placed rejection, his voice high. "Thank you too, Gaijin!"

He had only barely maneuvered his nose in time to meet his foes head-on that previous pass. A quick physical lean towards the right and a swivel of the eyes to his rear showed him that they were already in the middle of rounding back for another pass. Were he to mimic them for a third joust, he would be caught mid-turn with his pants down and his wings perpendicular to their sights, presenting himself as a large and effortless target. Instinct ingrained by lessons learned throughout the years he has been playing this game urged him to perform something daring, the only way to get another real shot at winning: heart pounding with adrenaline-laced blood and pure exhilaration, Magos decided to escape.

And so, down he went, elevators at the rear pitching up to make inverse of the opposite side. The wind whistled under and over the Hurricane's wings and the tips thereof as it cut through the air at hundreds of kilometers an hour and accelerated to even faster velocities. The sun beamed light down upon the plane as it crossed a clear gap between two clouds. The waves, in their endless march to the beach, glinted as he crossed the shore from a thousand meters above and entered the aerial jurisdiction of the English Channel. Crusades' worth of distance was rushed over in relatively quick moments, and yet those two still persisted at his tail, occasionally throwing a few woefully inaccurate and ineffectual energy lances at his direction, more to remind him of their presence than anything else.

Magos half-jumped at every flash of red light that seemingly terminated only in the far distance, at the face of the horizon. Seven hundred meters of altitude became five hundred as he made shallow his dive and kept it that way to ensure his speeds were at least above 550 kilometers per hour, and yet doing so wasn't helping him to lose the two fools at all, like they weren't even bleeding speed. Those two red crosses in the radar did not tire in pursuing him, that's for sure. For all Magos knew, the two bastards could actually have been enjoying this chase!

"Come on, come on," he worriedly encouraged, his feet duly tapping the floor. "Go faster, faster!"

Yet his poor Hurricane was already doing its best, even with WEP enabled. Five hundred and fifty kilometers per bell-toll became four hundred, and his shit-eating grin mixed unbecomingly with a grimace of excited half-fear.

"Come on, you stupid piece of-!" he yelled, stopping at the cusp of a banal curse, as the dots on the radar grew closer and more lasers were sent his way.

Indeed, it is not hyperbole to say that he was doomed, because he _was_. The enemy, through their superior craft – and since when the hell did War Thunder become a science fiction game?! – had gotten onto his tail: practically a death sentence in aerial warfare, and such that even if those two enigmas were kept aloft by prop instead of whatever arcane technomancy they were running on, the situation would remain black and bleak overall. To Magos, a level 29 player with an RB kill-to-death ratio of roughly 1.5 to 1, his options were locked between crashing to deny them the kill – which was dumb, considering they were controlled by the AI – and turning round in an attempt to meet them once more in a joust: likely to end with him burning and hurtling down even before he made half of the turn.

Or be set on fire from afar by a lucky shot, as what happened just now.

_**BAM! **_The most rocking and loudest explosion he had ever heard in his life birthed into a flash of flame and a puff of smoke when an energy lance hit his plane almost square on the left wing's fuel tank. The world swirled as the suddenly wounded Hurricane banked westwards to accommodate the demands of the deadly force pressing on that side, meanwhile he jumped up in real life and nearly pulled the headphones' forked cord off of its sockets. The most airless Oh-My-God escaped his lips as he tried to utter that and gasp and breathe normally at the same time. He did not even know till now that his modest sound system could produce a volume that high!

He looked up and looked right for no particular reason in the sudden confusion as his Hurricane dipped and the Strait of Dover promised him its endless and eternal embrace. Then he looked to the left, and saw flames eating away at the skin of his aeroplane. His pupils widened in a mix of emotions as he saw a foot-wide hole being bored by the fire, and that hole slowly expanding, like it were a living thing, a corrosive fungus of some sort. At this, he pulled his head back reflexively and screamed,

"_AAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!"_

And even he himself wasn't sure if he was just roleplaying and into it, or if he was actually afraid.

"Okay, okay, uh, okay!" he said rapidly, unsure of what to do. "Okay! Okay, I can do this!"

Regardless of Fate's seeming hatred of him, he clung on to stubbornness, as humans are well known to do, and the most primal of survival instincts kicked in. His hand, detached from the instrument yet again, found its way back to the mouse. His rump pressed itself back down onto the seat. The ailerons worked in tandem with the elevators as he struggled to make level the plane and escape from the death-spiral that threatened to plummet him down whatever little air there was between him and the sea and kill him utterly and forthwith.

And, surprisingly, he had managed to do just that. Yet the flame; that terrible, roaring, gasoline-fueled inferno, continued to eat away hungrily at his machine. That hole on the wing's surface was growing ever larger and he wanted to act, to do something to save himself and his plane from such a terrible way to perish. His lips quivered as he stared dumbly at the glowing, orange demon and as it stared back into him. And that was when it extinguished itself, ignominiously, immediately, and gracelessly so, leaving behind a thick trail of smoke in the wake of its silent death that was white instead of the black that it produced in life. Gaijin's questionable damage models yet again had saved him.

A quick and instinctive following glance at the radar after that fact also revealed that his foes weren't behind him anymore. In fact, they'd left entirely! They must have thought of him lost, and left him contentedly for dead.

There was a certain stillness, a hold-up, as he let the facts sink in and one dot made a line towards another to weave the matrix of the answer that said, simply, 'safety.' Then, relief flooded like a dam had suddenly broken inside his chest, and Magos nearly collapsed into his chair. "Oh God," he said, breathlessly. "Oh God!" he said again. "Thank you Lord!" and he was actually almost sincere when he said that.

He slapped his cheeks and squeezed them out. He shook his head vigorously over the sound of his straining engine and the more muted one of some of the loose flaps of metal skin on his damaged wing fluttering against the wind. And when he had regained his sanity, he let go of the mouse and shook two fists in the air in unadulterated happiness, enjoyment and appreciation of War Thunder: uncontestedly the most perfect video game of all time, hands down, everyone go home, there's absolutely no more discussion on the matter outside of the federal supreme court.

"That!" he exclaimed, barely being able to contain himself. "Was the damnest best gaming experience I've ever had!"

He was glad he lived alone. That way, no-one could see him in his most vulnerable state: pumping his fists while wearing an overly complex pair of goggles and looking at one direction when the monitor was in the other.

He breathed deeply, in and out, as he returned to the game. A quick checkup and wobble of the tortured aircraft later, he was surprised to find that an airstrip – and colored blue, too – had appeared on the radar. Though it was still quite far, he could still scrutinize: a lone island that hugged the coast of England in the middle of the Strait, surrounded by its blue waters which in turn were sandwiched by the great breadths of mainland Europe and the island of Britannia. The speck in the distance reminded him of Malta, the island fortress in the middle of the Mediterranean, somewhere south of Sicily. He regarded the isle for a moment, before the reddening of his engine on the subsystem icon forced him to come to a swift decision: he would land there, repair and rearm.

For as long as there was even the slightest hope, he remained true to his philosophy of always being an infuriating pain to kill. He took note of the fact that he had never landed such a damaged plane in first-person mode before, much less on RB physics.

"Well," he thought out loud. "There's a first time for everything!"

* * *

><p><strong>Same Day<br>Mont Saint-Michel**

The morning dew was brushed away by light fingertips as Yoshika Miyafuji bent down to feel and admire the blooming flowers at her feet. It was with juvenile curiosity that the girl, only a tender fourteen years old, examined with wide eyes and rosy cheeks these perhaps unnaturally healthy plants. Maybe it was the vibrancy of their colors that they looked a little artificial, but in the event that she met the master gardener, she had lots of questions to ask. Hey, maybe she could even write down what he would say! Mother would love new insights, especially ones of foreign origin, into her hobby of gardening.

"Uwaa," the cute sound came, as a half-whisper from her delicate mouth. "So pretty…"

Or maybe just different, and because of that, these flowers held a particular charm that their distant cousins in the Orient did not have. Maybe it was the characteristically gloomy days and perpetually obscuring clouds of Britannia – of which this day displayed in particular – or of their placement in the wider environs of an actual island fortress, but Yoshika did not have an answer, and did not bother to dwell on the question as she stood up in her sailor uniform and continued her early morning stroll through her new home for the next foreseeable months, walking down paths of cobble and concrete, sometimes shadowed by the stark towers and ancient battlements that Mont Saint-Michel boasted as she set her sights for the distant silhouette near the rocky cliffs over yonder who would be shadowed by the castle come afternoon and the sun switched places in the sky.

The place had a long and rich history, which Major Sakamoto had tried to tell her all about on the Akagi before it was attacked, but the strange names and far-flung dates, so frequently and diversely were they uttered during the informal lecture, escaped her almost entirely. Then again, Yoshika never claimed to be smart or clever; Michiko was far brighter than she was by leagues, consistently topping again and again on the class record with regards to the overall average grade, whereas she stayed just beyond the midpoint at best, and just behind thereof at worst. Mathematics and science were the two subjects she disliked the most and performed the worst at, though thankfully the seat plan put the ever-helpful Michiko just a desk away consistently like it was Fate's decree even through their years together at school.

But regardless of it all, Yoshika took in only a few things that Sakamoto had tried to impart upon her: that Mont Saint-Michel was built in the 8th century AD by some Catholic saint, that it had been an important place for Witches for quite a long time, and that it had, in preparation for its use as a strategically important installation, undergone modern architectural reinforcement and adopted a grand arsenal of military facilities like hangars, striker launch units, and sky-choking anti-aircraft batteries since the end of the First Neuroi War in 1918.

The Fuso girl's slippered feet stepped at the middle of the flat rocky outcrops whereupon Major Sakamoto practiced her sword swings, her silhouetted form stark against the dark grey stone of the land and the glistening waters of the blue sea that surrounded the island, over which was a very calm and peaceable weather system that contrasted brutally with the hateful one above Normandy. Over Terra's gentle sound of breathing, the waves lapping gracefully at the shore, Yoshika Miyafuji approached her superior with feathery footsteps that had a fragility as only a young and naïve teenaged girl could possess, full of admiration as Mio combined feminine grace with martial prowess without hiccups as she practiced her kenjutsu in tune with the very rhythm of the Atlantic.

Yet it was Mio who spoke first before Yoshika, and retreated from her overhead slashing stance to face the latter girl. "Yoshika, how are you doing?" she said, in her native language with a greeting smile. "Did you sleep well?"

The answer was an immediate and reflexive "Hai!" that followed up with a sudden flash of embarrassment on Yoshika's fair face, which then settled into a deep red on her rosy cheeks as she asked meekly, more to open up a wider conversation than know whether, "Major Sakamoto, are you really training this early in the morning?"

At this, the officer gave one of her trademark boisterous laughs, complete with her eyes closed and her elbows akimbo. It was with a positive inflection on her voice then that she spoke. "Please, Yoshika. You and I are in the Navy, so you don't have to call me 'Major.'"

"H-hai!" Yoshika answered again as was demanded by her culture in this context, a shallow interim forming as her tongue hesitantly rolled out the rather disrespectful way of addressing, "… Sakamoto-san."

"That will do," Mio replied contentedly, before switching the topic to sate her recruit's curiosity, her voice suddenly solemn: "This is the front line. We must always be prepared for the enemy, and train whenever we can. That is the key to survival."

"The front line?" Yoshika echoed, her face falling. Mio laughed again.

"Come on, don't give me that face! You've got what it takes," she affirmed. "I'll train you hard, so don't you worry about a thing."

At this, Yoshika's expression became, uncharacteristically yet so fitting in a puppy-like way, austere, before she bowed and delivered the expected "Yoroshiku onegaishimasu!" and rose with a smile.

_I need to try my best,_ she thought, setting the goal with firm decisiveness.

Mio closed the distance between them as an irate morning Perrine watched from a distant, high window like a grumpy, little yellow bird. "So, how do you find Britannia so far?"

"It's cold," Yoshika hugged herself and shivered exaggeratedly. "Very cold!"

"You'll get used to it in no time. We'll be living here easily for months, after all."

"Eh?" Yoshika let her arms fall. "That long?"

"War demands at least that much from us," Mio smiled.

"War sounds like a pain," Yoshika giggled, rubbing the back of her head like a joker.

"Hahaha! Well, it can be, it definitely can be at times, but there is no greater glory than taking to the skies and defeating the enemy."

"Yeah. I saw… you looked amazing out there, Sakamoto-san."

"Please," Mio humbly shook her head. "You were the one who rescued the Akagi."

Yoshika's eyes cast down; she did not believe her new mentor's words. Ever dutiful, the sting of regret still hung inside her chest at her inability to act under pressure at that one critical moment, and they were both, in the end, rescued only by the rest of the 501st. "But… even when...," her voice quaked.

The young girl nearly jumped when the Major slapped her cheerfully on the back. "Come on, you're too hard on yourself! Let's give credit where it's due, and you're especially deserving because you're still a rookie, one who hadn't yet flown a striker, but performed greatly anyway. Not everyone can do that, you know. You exposed the core of a large Neuroi on your maiden flight."

Yoshika looked back with wide eyes. "Is… is that really true?"

Mio theatrically put her fists at her hips and made a show of being offended. "Sergeant, are you accusing a superior officer of lying to you?"

She actually thought Mio was being serious. Quickly did Yoshika snap into stiff attention and close her eyes in childish fear. "N-no, ma'am!"

At this, Mio warmly smiled. Yoshika opened her eyes confusedly at the sensation of the taller woman ruffling her hair. "Very good. You'll do just well."

The raccoon dog could not help but blush. "Y-yes, ma'am!"

Her face was serene as a smile dimpled her cheeks, but that harmonious look faded for puppy-like curiosity as Yoshika noticed something in the sky, just over Mio's shoulder. She pointed at the distant object. "What's that?"

Mio turned to face accordingly. "Mm? It's just a- wait," she briskly delivered the last word, furrowing her brow. "There's smoke coming out of…"

She turned her eyepatch and let bare her magic eye, its iris glowing with ethereal energy and its pupil dilating to needlessly accommodate the rush of information that only her mind could process. There, kilometers away, and low in the sky, was a smoking aircraft – a Hurricane, by the looks of it, badly damaged with its left wing torn by what seemed to be flame damage and its propeller blades feathered flat as its engine lay silent in mechanical death. Its undercarriage was dropped down, and it wobbled slightly as it seemed to be headed for Mont Saint-Michel's privileged airstrip. Mio's communications bead that fit snugly into her ear quivered.

"_Major Sakamoto, do you copy? Major Sakamoto, do you read?" _Came a distorted male voice over the radio.

"Loud and clear, Flight Control," she closed her eyepatch, recognizing Corporal Lannister's voice, and walked to the edge of the cliffs with Yoshika following in her wake.

"_We have got a wounded bird requesting permission to land at home base, a Hurricane. It has lost its powerplant and has got a torn-up wing. He can't make it to Dover."_

"I see him. But why are you telling me this?"

"_Commander Wilcke is taking a bath, ma'am."_

Mio performed a double-take at the reason. "I see. Well, obviously, tell him permission denied and that he should ditch in the water."

"_He refuses to listen, ma'am. Thrice. He's not shifting his course. Thought he might listen to the vice-commander, so I hailed you."_

"I see. Is the runway clear?"

"_Yes, ma'am."_

"Good. Keep it that way. Have rescue teams been mobilized?"

"_Already on stand-by, ma'am."_

"Excellent."

Mio turned to Yoshika and put her finger off of the bead for a moment. "Miyafuji, you wanted to help people, right? Go to the castle gatehouse and join the paramedics. They might need you for this one."

The young girl saluted duly. "Yes, ma'am!" and she went running for her destination, sheer determination on her face. Mio, meanwhile, returned to the radio.

"Flight Control, patch me through to him."

"_At once."_

There was a buzz of static and a soft whine that ended in a beep, and forthwith was a channel opened between the Major and the wounded fighter. As her eyes did not let go of the speck in the sky that grew into a larger dot as the distance between them closed, Mio was the first to speak.

"Pilot, this is Major Sakamoto of the 501st Joint Fighter Wing. This airstrip is reserved for witches only. Change your course and ditch."

Rounded syllables and soft retroflex, distorted and colored by the sand of static by imperfect machinery, met Mio's ear instead of Britannian drawl. An unsure voice of Liberion accent was what answered the mildly surprised Major.

"…_-irl! Uh, okay, uh, Major, uh… God– uhh. This is Red Leader. Requesting permission to land."_

"That's a negative, pilot. Like I said, this airstrip is reserved for witches only; it's too short to accommodate your plane," she retrieved a small pair of binoculars from one of her coat pockets and peered through the lenses. "You should ditch near the shore; pull your landing gear up."

"_Uh. Are you sure?"_

"Yes, you are approaching RAF Mont Saint-Michel."

"_And it's too short? I'm really gonna have to…?"_

He didn't finish the sentence. Instead, after a beat, there was a mild gasp coming from him. Sakamoto's brow further furrowed.

"What's your name, pilot?"

"_My name? Ah, uhm, Magos."_

"Rank?"

"_Let me – Captain. Captain."_

"Okay, Captain Magos, are you wounded?"

"_I am. I think, very badly. My arm, Jesus… I didn't even know shrapnel was—it broke through the glass; I'm having a hard time moving the stick. I'm also hungry," _he joked.

Yet no amount of humor could detract from the danger of it all. This was bad news. Mio's heart nearly skipped a bit when the plane suddenly jerked down and towards the right, the craft wobbling heavily like some sort of deflated balloon as the ailerons strained and the wind whistled around it. So close was he already to the sea; with the sudden drop in altitude, he was going to have to hit it further off from shore.

"Captain, what's wrong?!"

"_Woah! Woah, it's okay, it's okay; I got it. Almost dropped the mouse, there. Whew."_

"Okay, Captain. Stay with me. Try to ditch near the fortress, do you understand? Are your flight instruments working?"

_"Nope. The gauges are reading wrong. The explosion must have shot it all up!"_

Like it could not get any worse, the pendulum swung and the grim reaper stroked his chin. The angels above began to spectate the whole ordeal. A soul, a life, now hung in the balance, and Major Sakamoto was going to be the one responsible for the outcome.


	4. Crash Landing

**A/N: More to fix formatting errors than anything, it is here wherein I declare that I claim no ownership over Strike Witches.**

**This chapter was hard to write for several reasons, and I found myself struggling at parts with:  
><strong>

**-The pacing, and I feared suffering excessive redundancy in either prose or content.**

**-The characterization of several one-time characters.**

**-The first aid scene, since I know nothing about that.**

**But I am pretty content in how the chapter turned out and happy in that I found a way, however strange, to put in my most relatively successful Crusader Kings II character, Queen Caitlin Ua Néill of Ireland, into this story. As I played her as a complete and utter sociopath with a mad lust for power, this is actually quite out-of-character for her.**

**Regardless of it all, please enjoy this chapter warmly.**

* * *

><p><strong>ONCE MORE INTO THE RIFT<strong>

* * *

><p>"<em>Febuary 1944. Today I saw an airplane crash into the sea. There was smoke coming out of the tail while it was flying. I went to the backyard to tell Mommy and Mommy hugged me so tightly that it hurt when we saw the airplane crash after she followed me to the beach where we could see the airplane crash together. I was very sad, but I learned that when airplanes crash, there is no explosion, so my friends are wrong."<em>

_-Child's Diary_

* * *

><p>As aircraft were really but thin-skinned metal frames encasing the powerplant, engine failure was one of a pilot's worst fears, whether it came by complete accident or by the deeds of an aggressor. In uniformed service, a front-line serviceman was more likely to meet it than his civilian or rear-echelon counterparts, but he was prepared for it. He most certainly knew the theory, as he went through entire slabs of books whose fonts were small and their meaningful terminology utterly alien, studying feverishly to pass the insanely long written exams; and he most certainly had gotten the hang of the practical side of things, lest he wouldn't have gotten the coveted and traditional thumbs-up signal from his instructor after his final and grueling practical examinations that consisted of twenty-four hours of flight time which included everything he had learned up to that point, from acrobatics to stall recovery maneuvers, to navigating via clock, compass and map and even the stars, to communicating via morse code; and, of course, getting to terra firma in one shape during an engine-failure situation.<p>

But the difference here, just before the shores of England wherein an ancient castle lay as one witness to the spectacle at hand, where the speck in the sky grew into a vague cross whose transition into wounded – holes in the wing, oily smoke belching out and making a thick trail – Hurricane, was quick; was that the pilot, though he wore the goggles and sported the scarf, never actually passed combat flight school. How could he, when he hadn't even taken it in the first place?

Yet here he was, in a critical engine-failure situation, similar to an up-check except that his farmland clearing was a bunch of jagged rocks, water and sand; and his instructor was experience itself, and that he would be graded by life or death instead of a swish of the pen.

His undercarriage already pulled up in accordance to the demands by the local airbase's vice-commander, the Major Sakamoto, Magos' world continued to sink as his machine wobbled towards the shore, feeling a flurry of emotions of which euphoric enjoyment was predominant.

The cockpit was a sure mess. Drying blood painted the left wall and soaked much of his shirtsleeve; and the canopy glass on that side, at the level of his shoulder, was cracked and shattered with a prominent hole wherefrom the wind howled in. The gun sights were useless as oil and soot had blackened almost the entire bottom half of the front pane, below of which was the instrument panel whose speedometer had been impaled with a piece of metal that once covered up a nearby inch-wide tear which now diagonally beamed light upon the rudder pedals.

Meanwhile, the radio crackled again and poured the strong, feminine voice of Major Sakamoto through the speakers of both of his headphones.

"_Where is the rest of your flight, Red Leader?"_

Huh. He hadn't thought of that. Perhaps deciding on 'Red Leader' as his callsign was a bit too hasty?

Voice chat had been fully implemented into War Thunder since 2013 and was elegant in its design in that only squad members could communicate through it. Transmitting was simple: one only needed only to press the default Right Ctrl key or any other key that the action was bound to, and then he could just let free his voice.

"Uhm, I don't know. Might have splashed somewhere back in France," the player replied.

"Agh," Magos half-wheezed in tandem. "… I don't know. Might, have splashed s-somewhere back in France."

His in-game avatar mimicked everything that passed through his lips, including his voice and the tone thereof, yet changed accordingly to his personal level of injury. Though it was hard to make out his transmuted in-game voice over the sound of his own actual timbre, the entire thing was like magic to Magos. Where was he when all of this was introduced? Was he unknowingly living under a rock, and did others secretly belittle him out of his own technological ignorance? Was this the beginning of the Singularity? Hell, was it already happening all this time yet so subtly no-one could detect it? So many questions that inquired of conspiracy and he had no answer to any of them, but regardless of it all, he could only barely contain himself in his excitement.

"By the way, you've got rescue teams for me, right?"  
>"B-by the way, you have got," Magos breathed in with effort, "rescue teams for me, right?"<p>

"_We do. Don't worry, captain."_

"How do I look like from down there?"  
>"How, do I look like from down," he swallowed errant spit, "there?"<p>

"_You're doing fine. Maintain that dive. You're going to hit maybe a quarter of a kilometer away from the shore at this rate."_

"Can you give me a rundown on, uh, superficial damage? Does it look bad?"  
>"C-can you g-give me-" a burst of gasps for air cut him off.<p>

"_Captain, are you alright?"_

"It's the blood loss…" the player said, mostly to himself, his voice laced with wonder, his eyes widening in stupefaction.  
>"I-it's the blood loss…!" Magos exclaimed, bereft of enjoyment and drowning in pain and delirium.<p>

"_Don't worry, captain. Just stay with me. We'll get you out of this. Just keep talking."_

But to answer the player's question, his plane looked quite broken even from afar. Plumes of thick, black smoke emanated from his left wing and the dead engine whose propellers no longer turned and hung still and unresponsive. The damaged wing itself looked shaky as the crippling blow dented heavily its structural integrity. Fuel sprayed out from a leaking fuel tank and polluted the pristine waters below in a wide spray. Magos, of course, knew all of this, thanks to his helpful HUD, save for the finer details like his radiator malfunctioning, but he wasn't all that concerned. In the game, he had safely landed more injured birds previously to take off once again seeking revenge. Of course, crash landing was a different matter, but how hard could it really be?

The next few still minutes were spent with him gliding an eerie, steady downwards as Major Sakamoto tried to keep his wounded avatar awake with auditory stimulus. One neat thing that he noticed was a vignette effect that slowly crept inwards from the borders of his vision until either he or Sakamoto spoke, at which point it would clear up. Magos cast his eyes down to examine again his bleeding wounds and how his left hand shook numbly on the throttle lever. Was he this close to death?

He instinctively moved a hand up to feel his neck in real life, to see if he had been hit there, but then stopped and scoffed at himself. He shook his head again – it was all very immersive, and he was completely in its manacles.

To look at the surface of the Earth from just maybe a hundred or so meters above it contrasted sharply to when one flew at kilometers of altitude. His slow speed adding to the effect, Magos felt utterly small to the suddenly wide, wide world, and was reminded that no matter how impressive his acrobatic or combat feats may be, that no matter how much its surface was pockmarked by craters and ash and war, the planet continued to revolve indifferently to it all and would patiently renew itself as the millennia progressed. This humble, passive might, in his situation, was proving to be choking and oppressive as he further descended and swore that he was close enough to the surface to make irregularities in the waves. He had a feeling that if he were to hit the deck right now, no matter what he did, he would be swallowed whole and killed.

Is this crawling sense of fear what real pilots feel?

"I, I'm flaring," Magos said tiredly.

"_Take it easy."_

To flare is to pitch your plane's nose up, that the tailwheel would hit the ground at roughly the same time as the main gear mounted on the wings. When ditching in water, it was a way to make sure that you wouldn't turn over due to friction from the nose hitting first.

But unfortunately, though Magos knew about it through tutorials in flight simulators, he hadn't actually taken a proper flight school.

"_You're pulling too much!"_

What used to be ten meters of air in between him and the glistening waters became a quick thirty as he, in poor judgment, pushed the mouse up a bit too much. Continuing in this errant fashion, he flexed his elevators down so he could gain speed and recover. But alas, the Hurricane, for all its relative lightness, was still a heavy war machine weighing in at over three tons. When he threatened to smash into the water nose-first in those last few moments, the panicking Magos pulled harshly up in vain, and succeeded only in that now, his plane's belly would smack first into the water.

"Ah, Jesusmaryoseph-! Ah, oh shit!" he managed to exclaim over the ones from the radio, before there was an explosion of terrible noise and the floor buckled up to break his legs.

* * *

><p>The captain put away his binoculars and turned to his crew. "Come on, boys," his voice was loud and encompassed the entirety of the small patrol boat he commanded. "Full speed to that bird! That pilot needs our help."<p>

"Aye-aye, sir!" the helmsman duly responded. Meanwhile, in the back, around the lone 20mm gun, his mates talked excitedly as the boat began to accelerate.

"Shit, did you see that?! Smacked right into the water! Think he survived?"

"Hell, I don't know. The canopy's not open. He might not be moving."

"Does it have to be open?"

"My cousin's in the air force. I think I remember him saying you need to have the canopy opened when you're ditching like this."

"Is it always this violent?"

"Hell no," the flight school washout who lied to save face stopped peering over his scope. "That guy made a mistake right there. Hope he's alright."

"Hell, me too. But aren't flyboys usually sissies? You think-"

The failure furrowed a brow at his offensive mate. "Hey, you calling my cousin and that fellow over there a couple of limp-wrists?"

The other man shook placating hands about. "Hey, hey, not like that, man. Didn't mean it like that," he backpedalled.

"Then what'd you mean, then?"

"Just that, since they're only taught to fly, they're not all that strong, you know?"

"Mate, don't talk about things you know nothing about," the washout said sagely, shaking his head, before returning to the lens.

"Whatever," said the other man after a beat, and then circled round the anti-aircraft gun to come to a certain sailor-uniformed girl from Fuso who sat on one of the benches. She was carrying with her a satchel almost bursting with medical supplies.

"Hey, lil' girl," he called.

The young girl stopped staring at the floor and looked up to him.

"You alright?" he asked.

Yoshika simply nodded, forcing a smile. "Mm, I'm alright."

"Hey," he crouched, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Don't be like that. I'm sure he'll be fine."

"But… you just said pilots like him were weak."

He gingerly removed his hand with a sudden embarrassment on his face. "Oh. You were listening?"

"You were quite loud," chimed in another voice, mature and womanly, from the ex-witch medic who sat beside Yoshika. "And it's a small ship. Hard not to."

"Oh, uhm… okay. Uh, sorry," and then he gracelessly left, regretful that he had made a fool of himself and scratching the back of his head. Yoshika returned to being downcast.

"Hey," the khaki-clad medic half-whispered, leaning in. "He's right, you know. You shouldn't be so down."

Yoshika looked at the medic with uncertainty. "But he hit the water so hard. And they say the canopy should be open…"

"There's no use worrying over such details until we get there. You shouldn't burden your heart so." The woman looked at the closing wreck in the distance, whose slowly sinking, broken husk spilled a cloud of oil into the waters. "But I do hope he's okay."

"Are you a doctor?"

The question came a bit out of the blue, but that's what one was to expect from juvenile curiosity. "Yes," the woman replied, "I am."

"You're a good doctor, right?"

"Well, I'd like to think of myself so. If I wasn't, I don't think I would have become a regimental surgeon."

"Then, if you're so high-ranking… we should be able to save him, right?"

The doctor smiled at this and lied reassuringly, "I'm sure we will, young pup. Say, that's quite a stuffed satchel you have there. What's in it?"

"Oh, uhm," Yoshika blushed, opening the bag and suddenly energized. "I'm not really a professional like you, but, uh, I packed some things."

"May I see?"

"Oh, uhm, here: I packed a couple dozen rolls of bandages, some bottles of antiseptic. Painkillers here, and…"

At the very least, the doctor took comfort in that she preoccupied this aspiring witch from hurt in the interim to their destination, because in the event that things did not go well, no amount of consolation could surely save Yoshika from grief. A particular thing of interest was that the young girl fumbling around the floor for the supplies she had just spilled reminded the doctor of her younger days by quite a lot. She could not help but chuckle a bit, really.

"You're Sergeant Yoshika Miyafuji, aren't you?"

"Huh?" The girl stood up after grabbing a fallen pill bottle. "Oh, yeah! What's yours?"

"I am Dr. Caitlin Ua Néill," the medic said, while similarly getting a pack of bandages and offering it to Yoshika. "Pleased to meet you."

"The pleasure is mine," Yoshika took it gratefully. "Um, please teach me lots, okay? I want to be a healer just like you are."

"Of course, sergeant. You know, I really like your enthusiasm."

"Hehehe, people say that a lot for some reason," Yoshika rubbed the back of her head, her cheeks flushed.

Caitlin smiled. "You're most certainly going to need it in this hands-on operation."

A few minutes later, the turbines of the patrol boat lay idle as they cruised along the last stretches of sea leading to the downed Hurricane. Caitlin, Yoshika, and three sailors then boarded the small rubber raft that hung at the side of it. When the ship swung as close as it could and stopped at the starboard side of the crashed aircraft, they were lowered down to the water at the end of a chain pulley. They then quickly started the motor of their raft as they began for their helpless quarry.

And as they neared, one of the sailors took off his shirt and bared his chest. Yoshika began to blush and almost protested, until he dove into the water and swam freestyle towards the wreck. Oil clung to his skin as he carefully navigated along the edges of a wing and eventually arrived at just below the cockpit glass. As the raft closed by, the sailor was surprised when the canopy jerked back—but then hung still. Helping the pilot pull it all the way over his head and above the back of the immediate fuselage, he turned around and waved his hand.

"Hey, he's alive!"

The Hurricane, bobbing and swaying lightly from the tides, was half-submerged. Water had flooded into the cockpit and now demarcated a line between air and sea at the wounded pilot's chest. From his blurry point of view, two angels, pitch-black silhouettes against the backdrop of the sunny sky, had come to save him. The first sailor had been joined by a second when he had hollered, and they worked together to wrench their quarry out of his machine, with one half-crouching, half-floating precariously on top of the submerged right wing. Magos extended his arms and did not feel anything, not even pain, so numb was he, as he was pulled by the wrist, then by the shoulder, and then by the torso as they fished him out of there. The people around were particularly worried and even he himself was concerned at his incredibly shallow breath as he was helped along the water.

Yoshika was stiff until the doctor put a gentle hand on her shoulder and smiled reassuringly. Of course, though helpful, the smile was forced. No one can do so genuinely when, just literally in front of you, was a man spilling gouts of blood into the water by his shattered feet. Indeed, the shivering Magos was a pathetic sight as he could not even open his eyes and was at the mercy of the sailors who guided him. When they had managed to get him over the side of the raft, it was the doctor, and not Yoshika who first gasped and exclaimed, "Oh my God," and to underline this meaningful phrase, the Hurricane's cockpit simultaneously sunk decisively and disappeared entirely from view.

It was only because of his tattered trousers that she hadn't realized until now that the pilot had no legs beyond the point of his knees. The discolored cloth, having nothing to accommodate past that area, became flat and limp accordingly. One sailor helpfully removed the pilot's scarf, leather helmet and goggles to reveal his cut-up face. A horrid gash from Hell forced his right eye permanently shut, though the left one's pupil still darted around in delirium, and a hidden cut – or perhaps several thereof – in his scalp let a river of blood run down his forehead. Traces of red mixed with his bubbling saliva through the gaps between his teeth that were slightly bared by his parted lips, wherefrom he sucked in and breathed out air at an alarming rate almost desperately.

One of the two who swam and retrieved him, upon examining further the man he had carried, hung his jaw agape, and then turned to the indecisive Caitlin. "Jesus Christ, doc, is he even gonna make it?"

Yoshika answered for her. "He will! I know he will!"

The younger girl then swiftly crouched before Magos and hovered her hands over his chest. From her wrists, there then traveled a blue glow to her fingertips to create a bright light that encompassed her hands and discolored everything below them. Although just beginning, Yoshika already began to sweat, and drops thereof began to collect and fall down her forehead. Caitlin looked at the girl, then behind to the motor-manning sailor, who merely shrugged and shook his head. But then she sprang into action, sitting down opposite of her fellow healer and giving the pilot a healthy dose of morphine for the pain.

For the pain, so that maybe he could pass on peacefully enough.

Her hands clasped Yoshika's as she added her own doubtful magic into the mix. The surprised teenager looked at her with wide eyes, but then returned her smile. Caitlin, however, failed to mimic Yoshika's look of determination as they cast their gazes downward. How can someone still be alive like this? Was there, really, any hope left for this man?

Magos, pale as porcelain by now, lifted a hand up, and found it held by one of the sailors who put pressure on it reassuringly. "You're gonna make it, pal," he said. "Doc Caitlin here's a good healer."

He tried to reply, but found no words coming out of his throat, so Magos just nodded his dizzy head.

Perhaps half a minute of silence reigned and life-giving magic poured generously out till Magos tried to speak again. Unlike last time, however, he uttered words – yet, in a pathetic manner; they came out more like gurgles than actual language: "I… They…!"

"You don't have to talk," Caitlin said. "Just take it easy."

"We'll get you through this," Yoshika supplemented, but the pilot wouldn't listen.

"Two of them-! Over- over-!"

"Hush, please," Caitlin chided yet again. "It's not good for you. Don't worry, you can talk all you like in the hospital."

Meanwhile, the helmsman restarted the motor and swiveled the raft to return to the patrol boat. Magos, ever errant, still refused to listen, and what he said demanded silence as his voice struggled to even clear his vocal cords and his rigid body tried to move the way he wanted:

"They killed me…! They killed me…! Two of them…! I was over Normandy…!"

"Pilot, please-" Caitlin was cut off.

"I tried-, but- they were too agile; I attacked them…! Two times! I tried- to escape! I," he swallowed blood and cleared his throat, "It was too slow. The Hurricane- is too slow! Stupid machine," his lungs heaved. "Too slow! Stupid machine! Stupid-"

"Yes, yes, it was the machine's fault," Caitlin hastily agreed. "Now please, calm down."

"I…," it came out like his soul was escaping. "I don't know…"

"You don't have to know anything. But you do need to calm down. It's not good for you."

"You should listen to her," Yoshika chimed in. "She's a doctor, so she knows what she's talking about."

His one good eye swung to the side to regard the young girl as they neared their mother ship. "A real- a real doctor, huh?" He seemed to be a bit more relaxed now.

"Mm, that's right," Yoshika cheerfully replied. "She's a regimental surgeon."

"Of the 226th Infantry," Caitlin supplemented.

"It's- it's all going black on me," Magos doubled his chin and widened his only good eye.

"Stay with us, pilot."

"We can make it!" Yoshika affirmed.

"I- I can't- my mother," his eye began to swivel up into his skull; the nearest sailor held its closing eyelids open.

"Stay with us!"

"She's calling- visiting- she-"

"Hey, c'mon, you're gonna make it," a sailor encouraged.

"I," Magos' face fell. "I don't think I can- my mother-"

"Your mother's not here, pilot. Stay with us. Listen to our voices."

"I can't- haven't prepared dinner-!"

"Please!" Yoshika so desperately implored, her voice cutting through the very air. "You've made it this far, so please continue to be strong! We're here to help you!"

His dilated pupil found the concentration to shrink and look at the young girl. "You-," he nearly choked, "You make it so hard to die-!"

"I don't want you to die!" Yoshika yelled.

"But my mother-"

"Will not be seeing her son coming home in a box," Caitlin interjected. "Please, you've made it this far. You just have to endure the final stretches."

"I…,"

"I know you can do it," a calmer Yoshika said reassuringly. "You're a good pilot, aren't you? I heard you were a captain."

"From the vice-commander? Y-yes, I- I am a captain."

"Then you must have been through a lot of battles. Maybe you should just think of this as another battle?"

"Heh," his chest heaved painfully at that one chuckle. "That's- that's one way of putting it, huh?"

"What's your name, pilot?" Caitlin asked.

"My name? M-Magos."

"Ma… gosu?" Yoshika incorrectly repeated.

"Y-yeah, that's it-!"

"Sounds foreign," Caitlin commented.

"You have a nice name, Captain Magosu."

"C-close enough," he tried to chuckle.

"I think it's a nice name."

"Y-you really think so?"

"Mm. I think that if I had a puppy, I would name it that," Yoshika nodded her head and beamed.

A barrage of painful hiccups wracked Magos' body as he laughed, and his laughter was joined by the others on the raft.

"Eh?" Yoshika looked around confusedly. "What's so funny?" Then, she blushed. "Oh! Ah! Sorry! It's a nice name! I promise I won't name a dog with it!"

"Oh, oh no-" Magos said, "It's fine. It's, eh," his jaw went slack. The sailor who held his hand and eye shook him a bit.

"W-wha-?"

"C'mon, stay with us, pal."

"I'm- I'm staying with you, don't worry-!"

"I'll bandage his wounds," Caitlin cut in curtly. "Sergeant, maintain that healing spell."

The ex-witch then took a knife from its sheath at her hip and used it to cut the useless flaps that hung after the bloody stumps that were Magos' knees. After rolling what remained of the sleeves up to his thighs, she then poured two packets of sulfa powder all over his wounds, and took a roll of bandages to wrap his stumps and the areas just before thereof tightly. Caitlin similarly performed the same procedure on his left arm, tearing away the sleeve, but with the added step of removing the larger pieces of glass from his flesh with a pair of tweezers.

"How do you feel?" The good doctor asked, as she tied up the last wrappings into a neat knot.

"Good enough," he said, as a sailor dressed up the gash that afflicted his right eye. "I-if you don't mind, though, c-can I go to sleep?"

"Go ahead," she smiled.

"Many thanks."

As the raft was hoisted up by the pulley again, Magos stared directly into the rays of the high sun before closing his eyes, his nostrils taking in the salty breeze of the seaward air and his skin, though numb, noting every gentle touch his rescuers made. There he was, once a grand fighter pilot, now a double amputee just barely clinging onto life and helplessly being carried along to the deck. With his avatar flanked by two healers – and since when the hell did War Thunder become a fantasy game?! – and surrounded by an assortment of generic seamen, the player stood up from his chair to let his arms stretch out.

The vignette effect that he had come to be familiar with then crept inward from his vision, meanwhile the simple colors of the subsystem damage report icon, which transparently hovered at the left side of his vision, seemed to belittle the devastating injuries that he had suffered. One point of interest was that the icon now took on the shape of a person: both legs below the knees were colored black, his left arm was a deep red, and his head a lighter one. The rest of his body was in a shade of pink.

"I'm coming, mom!" he shouted, as he threw away his headphones and turned off his monitor to finally unlock and open the front door.

"I'm coming… mom," the pilot whispered, as he drifted off into a dreamless, mechanical sleep.

"He's dreaming," Yoshika noticed with a smile, glad that the humours in his body did not respond badly to her magic, and that they were already on the way to normalization and then, eventually, even if it took years, recovery.

"It's a miracle, you know?" Caitlin said, as she took over Yoshika's partition of the healing spell when the girl could no longer go on in fatigue.

"Hmm?"

"I didn't think he would make it. I didn't even think he would speak that much. Looks like that sailor was wrong; fighter pilots are pretty damned strong, after all."

"Swing by to port!" yelled the captain. "Let's get this fella to a proper hospital."

"Aye-aye, captain!"

With the helmsman expertly spinning the wheel to the port side, the humble ship then made way for the shore.


End file.
